


What I Like About You

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Series: tumblr prompt fic [19]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 17:12:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17410946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: Bucky keeps a list of things he likes about Steve.





	What I Like About You

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kore in the January Journalling meme.

Bucky's got a list of all the things he likes about Steve. It started a long time ago. He doesn't remember when, exactly, but they were seven or eight at the time, newly declared best pals forever, and then Steve got sick.

Steve was always getting sick, but Bucky didn't know that then; they'd only been friends for a few months, ever since Bucky'd stepped in to defend Steve when Steve was getting the snot kicked out of him for defending a stray cat. The cat, at least, got away without injury. It's funny that Bucky can remember _that_ , but it was a point of pride for Steve at the time. He might have gone home with bruises from head to toe, but that damn cat was _fine_. It used to hang around on the fire escape outside Steve's bedroom and he'd feed it crumbs in between sneezing violently, because of course he was allergic. Bucky or Mrs. Rogers used to have to shoo it away once Steve started wheezing; one time, his eyes swelled shut before he let them send the cat away.

Anyway, the point is, Steve got sick, and it was a few days before Bucky was allowed to see him again. And for all that Steve could be the most idealistic guy Bucky'd ever met, somehow, he never applied that optimism to himself.

He'd been surprised that Bucky came by after school. "I didn't think you'd come."

"Are you or are you not my best friend?" Bucky asked. "Or did the fever make you forget that?"

Steve looked away, picking at a loose thread on his blanket. "I didn't think you'd wanna still be friends with me, since I get sick all the time."

"I'd be a lousy friend if that scared me off," Bucky replied. "And anyway, you get better all the time too." He didn't know then that the doctor was always telling Mrs. Rogers that Steve wouldn't last out the year, and even if he had, he wouldn't have stopped coming to see Steve. Best friends were best friends. That was the rule, and it was a rule Bucky didn't mind following.

"Yeah," Steve said, visibly cheered by this thought. "I do!"

"Don't get too excited, pal," Bucky replied, swinging his bookbag onto the couch. "I brought your homework with me."

"I don't care, as long as you came with it."

"Oh, you," said Bucky, in the same tone his mother used when he tried to snow her into thinking he'd done all his chores, but Steve's words warmed him and he liked the feeling a lot.

Bucky can't recall a lot of details now, but he knows many variations of the scene played out between them over the years, enough that one year for Christmas, in the depths of the Depression, and not long after Steve's mother had passed, instead of buying a gift—he knew Steve couldn't really afford it, and to be honest, neither could he—he'd grabbed an extra sheet of butcher's paper and made a list titled "Things I Like About Steve." It started with "you get sick a lot, but you always gets better," and included things like, "you always try to do the right thing, even when it gets your nose punched," and "you'll be a great artist someday and I'll say I knew you when." And it ended with, "I know you'll be with me till the end of the line."

Steve had blushed and tried to hide behind his bangs, but Bucky knew it. Each year, for Steve's birthday and at Christmas, Bucky added things to it, things like "you sing off-key but you alway knows all the words to my favorite songs," and "I like coming home to you." 

It was that last that made shipping out easier—if he made it home, Steve would be there waiting. He could never put on paper how he really felt, and Steve always preferred action to words when it came to that, their secret language of furtive touches in public and heated kisses in private, but he knew Steve carried the list everywhere, in an envelope tucked close to his heart.

It had probably disintegrated in the North Atlantic seventy years ago, but Bucky remembers enough of it to recreate it now that they're here in the future, just like he'd once promised to Steve.

After the war and the ice and Hydra, after Ross and Zemo and Thanos, they're together again, and Bucky plans to make sure Steve knows how much that means to him. How much _Steve_ means to him.

The list this time starts with "you're my friend" and "I love you," because now they can say it out loud, and it ends with, "I like coming home to you and knowing you'll always be there."

Steve tears up when he reads it, and gives Bucky a tender, heartfelt kiss. "These are the only vows we need," he says, and Bucky hums noncommittally, as if he doesn't know about the ring Steve's got stashed in his sock drawer, waiting to make an honest of man of him. 

At least now, whenever Steve says, "I don't know why you put up with me, Buck."

Bucky just rolls his eyes and answers, "Yeah, you do."

Steve laughs and pats his pocket, where the list lives again. "Yeah, I do."

*


End file.
